Romek Szczesniak, BSc. (Hons)

Applied cryptographer with over 20 years' experience in the field of digital identity and a strong track record providing security expertise to such well-known global names as De La Rue, Mastercard and Symbian.

Romek read Mathematics at Bath University and Computer Science at The University of East Anglia.

Romek took his first foray into digital identity with Inter Clear Service where he designed their Certificate Authority and following their acquisition by De La Rue built their internal research team. From there he moved to Symbian where he was involved in development of their IPv6 mobile stack before joining Atlas Internet to work on the security layer of UK ENUM.

The acquisition of Atlas Internet by Timico led Romek to join Telnic where he worked on advanced security protocols for the .tel sponsored top-level domain using Enum technology. Following the commercial launch of .tel stints as a PKI and PCI-CSS specialist followed with HBoS, Mastercard and ultimately a return to De La Rue for a European government smartcard project.

Moving to GameSys in 2012, he restructured their AppSec capabilities and introduced technical audit, pentest and zero day defence processes to address the needs of 600+ developers working in a continuous delivery environment.

Since 2014 Romek has been collaborating with Eleanor McHugh, producing a series of patents together which underpin the Yoti digital identity system. This lead to the formation of Innovative Identity Solutions in 2016.

Aside from his role as co-founder of InIdSol, Romek is currently working with a number of clients on GDPR compliance processes ahead of the 25 May 2018 adoption of GDPR into UK law.

Eleanor McHugh, MSc., BSc.

Systems architect with more than 20 years' experience in mission-critical systems, including a decade in digital identity. During her career Eleanor's developed and maintained systems for high-profile clients including Derbyshire and Strathclyde police forces, Inmarsat, the RTL group and HSBC.

Eleanor read Applied Physics, Electronics and Computing at Kingston University and Information Systems in a European Context at Canterbury Christ Church University.

Eleanor cut her teeth designing and implementing cockpit control software at Skyforce Avionics including the original Skyforce Observer paperless cockpit management system an the Avionics Interface Module for which her Masters degree was awarded.

Following the acquisition of Skyforce Avionics by Allied-Signal (now Honeywell) Eleanor provided realtime software quality management support to the Inmarsat Packet Data Service.

In 2000 Eleanor joined Abit, a North London startup specialising in automation systems for broadcast video transmission. During her four year tenure she worked closely with senior engineers and managers at NRK, RTL and CBC to deliver a series of mission-critical realtime control and data capture systems.

Eleanor later joined the Telnic team where she collaborated with Romek on practical implementation of prototype components for the .tel infrastructure and development of novel approaches to using DNS.

Subsequent years saw Eleanor splitting her time between conference speaking and select projects in social networking and digital identity with clients such as Virgin Media and HSBC before resuming her collaboration with Romek to design the Yoti digital identity system.

Aside from her role as co-founder of InIdSol, Eleanor audits codebases for a number of clients, presents regularly at conferences on privacy and software development, and is the author of A Go Developer's Notebook.